Loudoun Parents Protest AP First Amendment Literature Course
Parents upset about the curriculum for Park Ridge High School’s AP First Amendment Literature class lined up for the microphone at yesterday’s PTSA meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia. The class, a new elective available to juniors and seniors this year, is described on the school’s website as an exploration of twentieth century literature impacting Americans’ first amendment rights.
“There’s a cancer in our schools, and this book personifies it,” said parent Gerald Prevo, holding up a paperback copy of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller’s novel that tested American laws on obscenity. The first text on the class syllabus, Tropic of Cancer was banned in the United States until a 1964 Supreme Court declaration.
“This author’s trash doesn’t belong in our school,” Prevo told the panel of administrators, educators, and parents on the dais. “Miller was a blatant antisemite. Authors like this should end up like Roe versus Wade, yesteryear’s bad decision.”
Educators defended Tropic of Cancer on its literary merits and legal significance. School official said the AP class includes a “deep dive into obscenity versus art” and a review of 60 legal actions against the book’s publisher. “Tell that to the ADL and SPLC,” Prevo retorted.
Class material for an upcoming unit on parody and the First Amendment also drew parents’ ire.
“I got no problem with my kid learning that smut brought our nation to its current state of pestilence and deprivation, but why are we exposing them to this?” asked exasperated parent Alvin Goldstein, waving a rolled-up porn magazine.
Goldstein was referring to the fictitious advertisement for the Italian alcoholic liqueur, Campari, that was the center of the landmark Supreme Court decision upholding First and Fourteenth Amendments rights in Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell.
“We have fentanyl and alcohol overdoses happening in school bathrooms, yet you are intentionally exposing our youths to an advertisement for hard liquor. Are you dumb?” Goldstein barked. Boos drowned out a teacher who tried to explain that Campari wasn’t even a party in the case.
“The only thing worse than finding this under my son’s mattress was finding J.D. Salinger and D.H. Lawrence in his e-book history,” Goldstein, clutching the vintage November 1983 edition of Hustler, told school leadership.
When unruly parents ignored the PTSA President’s pleas for order, the meeting was abruptly adjourned. Parents say they won’t be shut down and the fight has just begun.
“Tonight, we came to talk about free speech, and they wouldn’t let us speak. Advocates from ADL, MADD, and SPLC are on standby, ready to support us,” Prevo told the Montgonion, hinting at future PTSA meeting controversies.
“I don’t care what the syllabus says. In six weeks my kid won’t be reading Satanic Verses written by an Indian, I can assure you that,” Goldstein said.
